Soulshine

“I’m never afraid. I Never look down. I always look up. That’s why I’m a very remarkable fellow! It’s wonderful the things I feel… Sometimes I could reach out and touch a star!” Chico, 7 th Heaven (1927) Positive thinking makes a tremendous difference in our lives. It’s all about perspective. And growing up in an alcoholic household didn’t allow me the chance to develop much in the way of a positive perspective. I spent most of my childhood feeling pretty hopeless. And the older I got, the less hope I had that things were going to get better. My teen-age years were far worse than my preteen years. Certainly, I learned to look down a lot, and if I felt remarkable in any way, it was remarkably worthless. I had learned to give all of my power away to my parents and that started a trend. Likewise, I gave my power away to mean-spirited teachers, peers and even complete strangers. I had learned to be the perpetual victim, who freely gave his power away because he felt ...

“… I leaned into my longing. I felt the sadness and emptiness in my soul that came from years of buying into the story that I am not good enough, something I’d been trying to avoid for a long time.” Chris Michaels, The Power of You In The Power of You , Chris Michaels refers to the belief of “I’m not good enough” as being like a beast in the center of your being. Anyone who has ever suffered from addictive behaviors is familiar with this beast. It’s the Beast of inherent shame and there’s no feeling on earth as bad. Many of us have tried desperately to tame this beast through our addictive acting-out. We may have used alcohol, drugs, sugar, shopping, people, gambling, sex or many other self-destructive forms of behavior to quiet the beast. All of them failed time and again—and they always will fail. Addiction is a means of running from the Beast. We never conquer anything we run from. Once we start running, we never stop because the beast is always one step ...

We make dozens of choices every day. Yet there’s no choice we make more important than this one: Do I want to be right or do I want to be happy? Too often in the past I’ve found myself making the choice to be right—even in the face of a reality that clearly told me I was wrong. Life wasn’t responding the way I wanted, my fantasies weren’t being indulged, life wasn’t treating me fairly and I wasn’t going to stand for it. Things had to be my way—the right way—or else. Unfortunately the “or else” only ensured that I would be miserable. Many people get stuck in believing that being right is going to make them happy. This is a warped fantasy in itself. A few years ago an anonymous lady came to me with a problem. She had learned that her husband had been cheating on her and she had made the choice to divorce him because she had a rule that she lived by faithfully. That rule was “If my husband ever cheats on me, the marriage is over. I will leave and divorce him” and she was...

Most addictive personalities have difficulty with trust. We grew-up in families where trust was discouraged, or simply not possible to maintain. As a result we now struggle with the very concept of being able to trust anyone or anything. In recovery the first person we need to learn to trust is ourselves. That’s a hefty assignment for most of us, but an extremely necessary one. We can start by beginning to believe in our own personal value. Everyone has value in this world. There are no exceptions to that one fact. Once we start seeing ourselves as lovable, valuable and unique individuals, we can choose to move forward by trusting ourselves to make life-giving decisions. We will see that we are equal with everyone in this world in that we all have a purpose for being here. We will see that we all share the same purpose of fully growing into being the persons we were created to be. And, as we begin to grow mentally, emotionally and spiritually through our recovery programs...

When you stand in front of that mirror and you’re beginning to cringe with discomfort, and the familiar old thought races through your subconscious mind “You are so unlovable,” remember this: You weren’t the first person who said those words to you. Someone else said them to you first. You accepted those words based on the false judgment of that person and you began the process of believing them. You started repeating them to yourself every time you looked in a mirror and you started that at a young age. You then became what you chose to believe about yourself. You made the conscious choice to believe the judgment someone else executed against you. And you can make the choice to stop believing it. Right here, right now you are the one who has to decide what you really believe about yourself. And you can choose to believe anything you want. You can choose to be anything you want. And you can choose to love what is—to love yourself just the way you are—if you really want to. ...

“So I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we’ll never know most of them. But even if we don’t have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there.” Stephen Chbosky , The Perks of Being a Wallflower Friday I attended a talk by author Stephen Chbosky. At one point in his talk, he focused on Charlie, the protagonist of his book and film The Perks of Being a Wallflower . He said that he wanted to portray Charlie as the nicest person in the world. Charlie is someone that everyone should love. He’s kind, generous and loving. He accepts people as they are and consciously works at refraining from judging people. He’s open-minded and honest and trustworthy. His life should be perfect. And yet that is far from the truth. Charlie has suffered greatly at the hands of his family. As a small child, he was sexually abused by his Aunt Helen. Somehow, the rest of the family was totally oblivious to this big white elephant disruptin...